


Survival

by farfetched



Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: Alien Impostor(s) (Among Us), Card Games, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Head Injury (not major), Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content (ch 2), Injury, Literal Sleeping Together, Love and the threat of murder, M/M, Pre-Relationship, based on a comic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27765292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farfetched/pseuds/farfetched
Summary: Lime and Yellow, after Red's murder, knowing there is an imposter, and knowing that they are trapped. Not knowing if they're going to be killed, knowing that even if they tried, they wouldn't be able to kick the imposter out anyway.The only thing they can do is stick together.(Based on the comic 'Love Among Us' by Crimson Chains, link in the notes)
Relationships: Black/Green (Among Us), Lime & Yellow (Among Us)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	1. Survival

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the comic Love Among Us by Crimson Chains on tumblr and WebToons, linked here: https://m.webtoons.com/en/challenge/love-among-us/list?title_no=542337
> 
> It's amazing, I really recommend you check it out!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tasks are done and reveals are made... that change very little, really.

In theory, Yellow is helping with the wires. And ostensibly, he is; he's at least supplying Lime with the insulation tape and more solder when he needs it, so at least he's being fairly useful. He's also using the chance to complain. 

"There's no way Green isn't the imposter. Doesn't it creep you out knowing he's just... on board? Skulking around?" Yellow moans, then rips a length of insulation tape and hands it to Lime. Lime wraps it around one wire, thinking about all the other tasks Yellow could be doing. True, helping him with this isn't useless, but equally... Yellow's taken it upon himself to stick to Lime's side _religiously_. Seeing as Black seems to have stuck to Green's side religiously as well – or, perhaps, science-ly, considering Black – the ship has rather split into two. He's become very acquainted to the sound of Yellow's voice. 

He doesn't hate it. And seeing as Black gives him the normal average human creeps and Green gives him the imposter type creeps, he's glad it's Yellow. But. Yellow doesn't seem to like silence much. Lime would really like two seconds alone to sit with a cup of tea and stare out at the stars without someone commenting on it. 

He refrains from sighing. Instead, he readies his soldering gun. Seeing as Yellow is about as good at this task as Pink was, it's a miracle he hasn't been chucked out by their slightly eject-happy crew. Maybe he covered for it by being excellent at shooting asteroids and some of the other tasks, whereas Pink seemed to have two left hands. 

Lime isn't really sure someone as tall as Green _can_ move in a way that would be called skulking. White seemed better at that. However, unwilling to make this recurring conversation longer than it needs to be, he nods. Yellow continues fuming while Lime works on soldering more wires together. How do these ships even function with this level of shoddy wiring? Never mind killing people on the ships, maybe they've got imposters doing the wiring, too. Maybe that explains the vendetta. And the wiring. 

"Or maybe Black _is_ the imposter, and _Green_ is covering for him..." Yellow ponders. It's certainly a possibility. Lime is planning to avoid being in a room alone with either of them. With Yellow on his mission of sticking together, it doesn't seem like that will ever happen, even if Lime tried. Lime shrugs. He's pretty sure it's Green. Black, he's seen poring over the samples in Med Bay plenty of times. Yellow has been talking to him alone for way too long without murdering him to be the imposter. That, or he's doing a very good job of hiding it, and is perhaps fond of Lime? 

It's a puzzle. 

"Urgh, we should just eject both of them!" Yellow spits, crossing his arms. "At least I know I can trust you!" 

Ah, he thinks as he holds up two loose ending on a matching wire: the final cut wire. This whole wiring system really is a mess, Lime thinks as he solders it. As much of a mess as this situation, really. Standing up, he slams the panel shut with his knee, and advances on Yellow. Yellow back away until his back hits the wall. His face a mixture of bemusement, dawning panic, and... something else. 

"You can't trust anyone 100%," Lime states, and flips the power back on. He probably shouldn't have done that. He still has a soldering iron in his hand, too. Oops. He unplugs that and collects the insulation tape and solder that Yellow had dropped. 

Yellow had kinda been in the way. He probably ought to have just said that. Lime and words… don’t really work too well.

"Lime?" Yellow says, undercurrent of shakiness in his voice. Lime nods. "Please don't... scare me like that." 

"... Sorry," Lime murmurs, then for good measure, pats Yellow on the top of his helmet. He jerks a thumb towards the exit of the room. "Trash?" Yellow nods meekly, and trails after him. This, then a cup of tea. A nice cup of tea watching the stars glide by and forgetting about the imminent threat of death by imposter. Perfect. 

He gets a minute or two of peace. About the time it takes to traipse from electrical to the trash chute in the cafeteria. Yellow helps him with the damn clunky lever, hard to push all the way down. He hovers with his hands still on the trash chute, and for a second, Lime thinks he's checking for something left in the chute. 

"How are they both still alive, if one of them is an imposter?" 

To be honest, Lime has asked himself similar questions. After Black had mentioned his suspicions regarding Green – must have been founded on something, Lime thinks, because Black doesn't seem the type go merely go on 'intuition' as stated – Lime had taken the care to observe Green as subtly as possible. Green had seemed to soften with regards to Black over a few weeks, between White's ejection and Red's murder. 

Black isn't great at lying, Lime has observed. When he stated it was due to intuition, he'd glanced into the corner of the room, towards the vent grate. When he'd said he didn't know who it was, he'd glanced at Green. Black was very good at saying what was on his mind, no matter how disturbing. He'd thoroughly creeped Pink out within two days of setting off just by talking about piercings getting ripped out in accidents. 

So. Black knew, and was covering for Green. But Green had covered for him too. Now they're barely apart. Green softens significantly talking to Black instead of anyone else. 

Lime is pretty sure he knows what's going on. He’s also sure he does not want Yellow to be screeching about it. 

"Who knows?" He checks his task list for the day – clearing the oxygen filter, and actually ridding the trash into space. Cup of tea? Urgh. He'd best get this stuff done first, though. 

"I mean, do imposters have emotions? They kill people though!" Yellow says while they walk over to the oxygen filter. How are there always leaves in this thing? Damn trees. Lime takes his helmet off and sets it to one side – it makes this task easier. Otherwise the helmet clunks against the side of the filter and if it scrapes it makes a horrific noise. 

"Humans sometimes kill people, and they still have emotions. Maybe we're a threat to them somehow," Lime murmurs, and sticks his hand in the tube, trying to grab those damn leaves. This task should be easier than this. He can’t even see the damn things, left to grope about blindly.

“Left. Back a bit. There,” Yellow murmurs, as though he’s operating a claw machine. Lime used to like those. He grabs a leaf, and throws it back into the tree enclosure to rot down. “I doubt we’re a threat to imposters if they can kill us so easily, and blend in.”

Lime shrugs. Not like he knows anything about it, anyway. He’s not really going to volunteer himself to have a nice chat with an imposter just to ask. He’s only passively curious. Maybe Black’s asked. Black probably has asked.

God, he preferred this place with more people on it. The Skeld is so damn empty like this. He’s only here because he likes the stars and wanted to get away, but now he’s here, on a broken ship with murders afoot, he wishes he could go back.

A useless thought, now. Let’s see if they even make it to Mira. Let’s see if they can evade the imposters there, too.

He liked life with a lot less murders. He’s become frighteningly used to seeing corpses and blood.

Yellow continues helping with guiding his hand remotely, until the filter is clear once more. Yellow falls quiet as they make their way to the trash, and helps with the lever again, heavy and chunky as it is. They both silently watch the trash float off into space, no doubt thinking of all the other less savoury things that have been ejected out of the ship.

* * *

Yellow’s task list indicates that they’re entering an asteroid field soon, so Lime gets a short reprieve in which to get his cup of tea. Yellow insists that he doesn’t sit in the cafeteria alone, though, so instead he sits against the window in the weapons room, sipping it and watching the stars and blown up asteroids. Yellow is incredibly good at this; he falls into a level of concentration that’s intriguing to watch, although Lime’s seen it a lot recently. It’s not like he’s had anyone else to watch.

It’s a few hours, in which the dregs of Lime’s tea grow icy cold as he swills it mindlessly this way and that. Tea is probably a luxury up here, but he used some of his packing space to include some, and uses it sparingly. He can deal with weak tea while he’s on the ship. He wonders if Mira has fresh tea; maybe there are cargo vessels. Maybe those have been infiltrated with imposters too, and there’ll be a space version of dumping tea into the harbour. Maybe Yellow will be shooting down high speed tea bags instead of asteroids, next time.

“I think we’re through…” Lime glances up, finding Yellow wringing his gloved hands together, the shine of the lights rendering his face impossible to see. “Can I rest?”

“Go back to your room, if you want,” Lime says, but Yellow shakes his head.  
“Here is fine. Just for a little while. I think another field is on the way, probably half an hour or so…” Lime could probably verify that on his task list. It’s probably his turn to shoot asteroids. Yellow will undoubtedly take it instead, so he nods. Yellow takes little time settling in next to him, removing his helmet and gingerly resting his head on Lime’s shoulder.

That’s… new.

“Just for a bit, please?” Yellow nigh-on whispers. Lime doesn’t see how it could possibly be that comfortable; he shoves a hand under Yellow’s cheek and pushes it up. Ignoring the betrayed look and the start of questions, he disconnects one of the pipes that runs over the shoulder of his uniform, and pats his shoulder again. The look of relief on Yellow’s face is palpable. Lime returns to looking out the window. He wasn’t used to physical closeness on Earth, let alone here, with murderers and suspicion afoot. The pressure on his shoulder returns once more, taking a moment to settle. Lime wishes he knew how to deal with this. He burns the stars into his retina instead, especially when Yellow shuffles closer, leg pressed against Lime’s, their arms flush, a small murmur of a thanks as he does so.

Lime doesn’t have any choice over who he’s stranded in space with, but he’s not upset with this. Loud and prone to complaining Yellow may be, but they’re in the same situation, on a small ship with a known murderer. It would get to anyone, but Yellow has taken the deaths hard, especially Red’s. They all assumed they were safe, after White’s departure, but this must have shaken him, finding there was more than one imposter.

Footsteps.

Lime freezes, just able to see two pairs of black boots from around the weapons chair. They don’t seem to notice that anyone else is around.

“If I cut your finger off, would it regrow?” Black asks brightly, far too brightly to be asking such a morbid question. Green sighs heavily.  
“Yes…” he intones suspiciously. Black’s eye glitter.  
“Can I do experiments on it? I wanna try with imposter flesh. How many times would it- What?” Black cuts off, bumping into Green who’d stopped abruptly. Green, taller than Black, had spotted the two of them over the chair, something Black only notices upon leaning around it. “Oh.” Black remarks, unrepentant. Yellow, Lime notices, has gone completely still, but he keeps his eyes shut and his breathing even.

Green stares intently at Lime, who just stares back. He swears he can see murder calculations going on behind those eyes. Lime nods hesitantly.

Everything is silent for a long, long moment. Yellow does a good job of pretending to sleep.

Lime takes a breath.  
“If no one dies, I heard nothing.”

Green blinks, almost audible in the wide expanse of thick silence, then laughs. It’s raucous and grating and not at all comforting. Black smiles at Lime widely, no comfort there either. Lime holds fire, holds his breath.

“It would be a tie, anyway,” Green remarks, something of which Lime has not a single doubt about. Black is not going to lose this opportunity, and with the look he gives Green, there is no incentive there for him to vote to eject him. He also thinks Black may have removed the wiring to the emergency meeting button. “I’ll let you live.”

And on they go. Lime releases his breath, and just about hears a smacking sound, and Black yowling in pain.

“You idiot!” Lime hears Green shout before the ranting becomes too far away to hear, and smiles grimly. They… aren’t out the woods yet.

“I am not letting you out of my sight for even one second,” Yellow states. His tone is such that there is no argument Lime can make to get around this.

Lime can’t even think of one. He doesn’t even want to think of one. Lime would not put it past Green to try and kill them, although manning the ship alone would be a lot for Black. Maybe this is a case the two of them can make in return for their lives.

“That… sounds reasonable.” Somehow, the nebulous fear of death has solidified into something very, very real.

“How is Black not dead?”

Because, Lime thinks to himself, for some reason, Green is in love with him. Lime just shrugs.

“We… should eject them both…” Yellow states, with far less certainty than mere hours before.

“If Black has his imposter tamed, I think we shouldn’t raise a fuss. I want to stay alive,” Lime murmurs slowly.  
“I- yeah. I hate that he’s right, too. But yeah. Urgh.” Yellow buries his head further into Lime’s shoulder. “Which room are we staying in…” Yellow asks, and now he actually thinks about it, that’s the logical conclusion to not letting either one out of the other’s sight. Lime thinks about it for a moment.

“I’ll solder my vents shut and wire up an alarm system.”  
“Why your room?”  
“It’s got a window.” A small one, more like a porthole than a window, but he can see out of it, so it counts.  
“You got me. Okay. Hope your bed is big enough,” Yellow whispers, then shudders, a full body thing violent enough to jolt Lime too, the dregs of his tea sloshing dangerously close to the rim of the cup. “ _I hate this._ I _HATE_ this!” he shouts, standing up and shaking his whole body out. “It creeps me out so bad! I wanna- I wanna! _Urgh_!” he shouts, making several aborted gestures, looking as though he might kick the glass or punch it. Then his hands fall to his sides, and he stares out into space again, his expression blank. “I want to live, though.”

He collapses into a crouch, hands pressed to his face, his shoulders trembling. “I didn’t come out here to die, I want to live!” He mumbles into his hands, his voice shaky. Lime crawls closer and pats his head. Yellow peers at him through the gaps between his fingers with one watery eye. Lime gingerly puts his arms around Yellow, resting his forehead against Yellow’s head.

“You stayed quiet,” Lime murmurs. Yellow, the active one, the loud one, stayed silent. He doesn’t get it. He definitely wasn’t asleep, although he seems to have fooled the other two.  
“I would have got us killed,” Yellow states, as though that is mere fact. Lime can’t even argue, although he’s not so sure he’s saved them from certain death.  
“We’ll make it to Mira.” He makes it as sure as he can. They’ll do everything they can to make it to Mira, even if it means bowing down to an imposter and his lover. They’ll make it. They have to.

Yellow task list bleeps alongside Lime’s; he releases Yellow to check it. Asteroid field approaching. Yellow sniffs loudly, steeling himself, and stands up, plonking himself down in the chair with a determined gaze past the controls.  
“We’ll make it to Mira.” Just before he takes the controls, he flashes a grin at Lime. It’s shaky and uncertain, but there. “Thanks.”

Lime didn’t have a choice about who he was stuck in space with, but this doesn’t seem like a bad option. They’ll make it. Somehow.


	2. Reaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lime and Yellow embark on their bed-sharing adventures, and Sabotage raises its ugly head - and, of course, more questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, please go check out Crimson Chains' comic, Love Among Us! It's on Webtoons and on Tumblr, link in the first chapter!

The bed felt a lot bigger when it was only him trying to get in it. It’s not as though it was ever big to begin with, just a normal Earth sized bed, or perhaps slightly smaller. It’s not as though they have room for too much luxury. 

For him, alone, it was fine. 

For two of them? It’s way too small. Neither of them are necessarily as tall as Green, and neither of them are particularly broad either, but even so, Lime doesn’t think it’ll be possible for them to both lie down without touching. 

It doesn’t sound particularly comfortable to him. 

“Get your mattress, I’ll sleep on the floor,” Lime says, purely because if they have to do this, it should be in the most comfortable way possible. Sleeping on the floor, alone, is probably preferable. He’s never actually shared a bed with anyone, but all he’s heard from people who have is complaints about sheets and duvets being stolen, dead arms and morning breath. He’s not eager to subject himself to that without good reason. 

Yellow, however, frowns. “No, that’s…” he trails off, trying to find his words. Lime raises an eyebrow. _He actually wants this_? “These mattresses are really thin. It won’t be comfortable. Cold, too. And besides, unless we’re really close, Green could kill one of us off really quietly, and if you’re that far away, we wouldn’t know.” 

Cold, yeah, maybe, but Lime’s never really been one to complain much about that. And the mattress isn’t that thin. He’s slept on futon type beds before and they’ve been really comfortable, and it’s thicker than them, he thinks. He also would hope that a murder would be loud enough to wake either of them, but he's never actually seen one happen. He glances at Yellow. He’s wringing his hands a little bit, eyes flitting about. 

Yellow… does actually want this. For whatever reason. Fear, probably. Yellow seems to be more of a social being than Lime, and maybe he goes for physical comfort when he needs it. Fine whatever. It’s a stressful situation, and if it means Yellow breathes a little easier, than it’s probably fine. 

Lime shrugs. “Fine. We’ll see how it goes.” Yellow nods, but he’s a little brighter in mood. Lime really hopes this won’t result in bad sleep. It’s not like he knows if Yellow will steal the covers or snore or whatever. He doesn’t really know if he does. An experiment borne of fear. Black would want to see the results if he knew. 

Best then, that he doesn’t. What is Lime even thinking, of course he won’t. He grabs his toothbrush and waits for Yellow to do the same before setting off to the communal bathroom. An en-suite would have been nice, but no. Some of them complained vocally about this at the start. Back when that was the biggest problem, back before the bodies started piling up and they realised there were imposters on board, ready to kill any of them at a second’s notice… 

Somehow, all those things seem too trivial to moan about. Sure, an en-suite would be nice, but not having the threat of imminent _murder_ would, you know. Make his day. Make his life, actually. Literally. 

Back on Earth there had been rumours, sure, Lime thinks as he mindlessly brushes his teeth, Yellow doing the same beside him. Rumours of spaceships arriving half-full, not at all. Fragments of distress calls, unintelligible. Lime never asked, assumed it was some propaganda of the anti-space protestors. 

Now, he’s starting to think they were right after all. If they’d never gone into space, they might never have encountered imposters at all. Who would have thought humans’ biggest predator would be found in space, where life had been assumed impossible? 

“Lime?” a voice to his left asks quietly. Glancing across, he realises that he’d stopped brushing, instead staring blankly at his reflection. Yellow tilts his head in question. “Are you feeling okay?” 

To be honest, if he’s ever okay again, it’ll be a miracle.   
“Just thinking an en-suite would be nice,” Lime states instead. Yellow chuckles under his breath.   
“Too nice for a ship like this. Maybe when we get to Mira…” Yellow glances across at him and smiles weakly. Neither of them quite believe in it yet, but they’re trying. “When we get to Mira.” Yellow affirms to himself, not sounding terribly sure about it. Lime nods. 

Trying, and largely failing, to keep thoughts of murderers at bay, Lime takes more notice of brushing his teeth and making sure he gets every surface. The least chance of morning breath, whatever that is, the better. When they’ve both finished in the bathroom, they each glance up and down the dimly lit corridors before dashing back over to Lime’s room. 

Changing is a little awkward, but Yellow blathers about facing away from each other and not looking and saying when he’s done, so avoiding sight is fine. Lime opts for flopping on his back on the very edge of the bed, folding his hands neatly over his stomach and closing his eyes. It seems like the best position to be in. 

“Don’t do that, you look like a corpse!” Yellow hisses when he pulls the covers back. Lime opens one eye and separates his hands, one resting over his hip bone, and the other remaining over his stomach. Yellow doesn’t look overly happy about it, but he doesn’t say anything else about it, lying on his side, putting his back to the rest of the room and bringing his knees up close to his chest. His legs are just brushing against Lime’s side; Lime considers shifting across more, but his arm will end up off the bed, and that won’t be comfortable either. He’ll put up with this. 

“Sorry,” Yellow mumbles. When Lime looks over at him, his gaze is firmly fixed on the pillow. “I can’t move any further away. I just… I don’t want to walk onto any more… scenes.” 

Right. To be honest, even like this, Lime wouldn’t put it past Black to help Green murder them both. They just have to hope that Black thinks they’re useful to man the ship. That said, Lime did spend a good hour welding the (very small) vent in his room tightly shut, so hopefully that’s not an entry option. 

Tomorrow, he’ll rig an alarm on the door. There wasn’t enough time today to work out which wires he could steal from to do it. 

Oh, right. The emergency meeting button. That Black’s already sabotaged. Or Green. It could well be imposter wiring. Well, that’s a job for tomorrow, anyway. 

“It’s okay,” Lime states, and turns his head back to the ceiling. Out the corner of his eye he can see through the tiny window, stars as static as they ever are despite the speed they’re travelling at. Thousands of miles an hour is nothing next to billions of miles, though, and the view only changes slowly. 

“Okay,” Yellow mutters. He’s got something on his mind for sure, but Lime doesn’t ask. With one last look at the stars, he closes his eyes and waits for sleep to come claim him. 

It’s weird, on a spaceship. There’s no day and night, no change at all. Sometimes he realises he’s worked for hours longer than he ought to have done simply because he hadn’t been tired, and hadn’t seen anyone for them to exclaim that it was late. Sometimes he wakes up very late in the ‘day’ and someone would tell him it was late to be getting up, but he doesn’t really understand it. On here, hours become largely meaningless, don’t they? Hours were always a way to mark the time of the sun, the moon in its orbit too, and how long things take. Time kind of ceases to exist on here. He knows that time is passing, but trapped in a metal tin can flying across the empty vastness of space, the fact that he might have gone to sleep at ‘4am’ seems very pedantic. To start with, he preferred working in the so-called early hours, because it was peaceful. 

Back, of course, when the ship was full. 

After the first murder, he tried to keep up with other people, just so if he did get murdered, there was a chance that they might identify his murderer too. Now with Yellow stuck to his side, he’s told by Yellow when to go to sleep (when Yellow gets tired) and when to wake up (an incessant knock on the door, growing ever more frantic until he answers. Then he receives a relieved face, and a ‘good morning’. 

Lime always wants to tell Yellow that without a sun to call their own, morning doesn’t exist. He always ends up nodding and trodding with him to get some breakfast, instead. 

He’s going to kind of miss that. Especially if he doesn’t even get a good night’s sleep. 

“It’s been a while…” Yellow mumbles tiredly. Lime opens his eyes and glances at Yellow; his eyes are drooping, his hands curled up near his chest, as though he holds something, or as though he wants to. He catches Lime looking, and huffs a quiet laugh. “Since I slept next to someone,” he explains. He seems kind of happy about the fact that he’s able to. Lime shuts his eyes again. 

“Never done it,” he murmurs.   
“Really? Never?” Yellow asks. Lime shakes his head, and Yellow laughs again. “Well. I guess we’ll see if you like it. I’m told I don’t snore, or shift too much, by the way.”   
“I wouldn’t know.”   
“Well, as long as you don’t sleep with your eyes open, I can manage.” Yellow shifts, and Lime thinks it’s a little bit closer. “Good night…” he whispers, on the verge of sleep. Lime wonders if he normally sleeps this easily, but then, Lime is pretty sleepy now too. He hums a vague response and tries to empty his brain. 

He’s asleep faster than he would have thought.

* * *

The reactor is alarming for imminent meltdown when he jolts awake. Yellow is already pulling his suit on, a terrible pallor to his face. 

"The reactor!" Yellow hisses at him, redundantly. "Come _on_!"   
Lime doesn’t respond, rather taking his time to rapidly shove his suit on over his pyjamas, small stars all over them. Why does the reactor or oxygen always go off when he’s sleeping? When the crew was full, he’d have waited a minute before moving to see if they got to it first. Sometimes they did, sometimes he’d get out of bed and then end up getting back in when they sorted it. 

Now there’s only three of them even able to fix it, and one of them is Black, who… well, probably would like to stay alive. 

Wait. Isn’t that weird, that it’s going off? The chances of an actual fault with the reactor are really, _really_ low. Whenever it goes off, it’s usually found to be an imposter messing with it eventually. 

Why would Green mess with the reactor now and risk hurting Black? Considering that he’d actively tried to prevent him being ejected, it’s just odd… 

Well, that’s something to think about once the reactor is actually sorted. There’s about ten to thirteen minutes to get it sorted, which is kind of tight. It’s the only time that time seems real, when Lime can see the counter for the alarm flashing on his task view and going steadily down. 

A few seconds later, they’re both dashing out the door. Running behind him, Lime sees the absolute wildness to Yellow’s hair before he pulls his helmet on – likely his own too, if he cared to check in this moment. He smiles. _Cute_ , he thinks to himself. 

Before he gets a chance to dwell on that thought, it’s forgotten by the sound of a door clicking to their right; they both freeze, only now considering – an ambush? Is this how they die? The adrenaline starts going, shoving the remaining sleepiness from his brain- 

Only for Black to stumble out, wide eyed. He’s only got one foot in his suit so far, leaving them with the view of an overly large T-shirt stretched over his small body, hanging far down his thighs. The neck line is such that his whole neck is visible, including a circular ring of sharp marks, a hint of blood oozing from it; his face is flushed, his eyes are darker than usual. 

Despite the situation, Lime and Yellow just stare. If there was any doubt at all about what’s going on between Green and Black, well. There surely isn’t now. Black blinks at them owlishly, then realises his state of dress, and does his suit up whilst ‘explaining’.   
“Green is on his way, he’s just a little… tied up right now…” 

Right, Lime thinks to himself. Then thinks again. Oh, _right_. So that’s how it is. Okay. He hopes he can forget that image. Completely. 

“Right…” Yellow says, very uncertainly. Yellow’s not stupid, he probably knew something was up, but likely didn’t want it confirming, really.   
“Reactor.” Lime reminds himself, and them.   
“Oh, right! Yeah. Reactor! I wonder why…” Black blurts out, going into thought mode.   
“Think later!” Yellow shouts as he stomps off down the corridor towards the reactor. “I’ll take it that your boyfriend didn’t do this then! Good!” 

Black blinks, then laughs. "I hope not! I think he was enjoying himself." 

Black has zero filter, or maybe enjoys messing with people. Or both. Lime sets off after Yellow and tries not to dwell on those thoughts at all. Luckily his visual imagination isn't great, but the thought is still there. Reactor. Imminent death. Yeah, that should work. Usually does for erasing everything else from the brain. 

It doesn’t actually take them long, Black and Yellow on the hand scanners (remind him to clean that tomorrow…) and Lime checking to make sure it’s all sorted, the after-echo of the alarm buzzing in his ears. Since Black is just fidgeting, Yellow apparently opts to send him on his way. 

“Black, just go,” Yellow starts huffily, when Lime hears the sound of Black scuffing his boot on the floor for about the fifth time. Yellow pauses however, then continues hesitantly. “But, um, I don’t know what _they_ have, um, _down there_ , but be safe! There’s some, err, supplies, shall we say, next to the first aid kit in Med Bay,” Yellow stutters awkwardly. “If you need them.” 

Black remains silent for a second, before laughing sheepishly. “Thanks! I’ll bear that in mind! See you!” he remarks cheerily, sounding actually grateful. As he leaves, Lime thinks he hears something about ‘can imposters get’ before he moves too far away to hear. Lime is incessantly glad of that. 

Yellow shuffles up to him, and sighs heavily. “Oh my god. Of all the people, of all the things, of all the advice I have ever given, that has to be the weirdest.” He laughs, putting his arms on the rail and leaning his forehead on them. “Definitely the weirdest…” 

Lime nods, still poring over the reactor stats. Yup, looks like an imposter job again. But if Green is, well, ‘tied up’, who could have done that? White is dead and gone, floating in space. Right? Is there another imposter? 

Yellow wouldn’t have been able to help sort the crisis had he not been a crewmember, and the same for Black. Plus, they’ve all been doing tasks, so Yellow knows he’s not an imposter either… 

Either Green has done this – judging by Black’s surprise, he doubts it – or… 

“Do ghosts exist?” Lime asks, finishing up with the post-alarm checks. He closes the panel on the reactor as Yellow squints at him. 

“Um, you’re going to have to explain that one,” He remarks as they set off back towards the room.   
“If Green didn’t do it, then who? White?”   
“But how? And why? Can they still try and kill us from beyond the grave?!” 

Yeah, that’s not a fun prospect. Not only is there one imposter, a visible one, to keep an eye on, but an invisible one too? 

“For now,” Yellow starts wearily, “I’m going to assume Green did it somehow. I’m not going to think about this right now. Let’s just get back to sleep…” 

Lime nods, yawning as he follows Yellow into the room and haphazardly shucks the suit and hangs it, nigh-on collapsing back into the bed. Yellow seems a little closer again, a little more pressed to his side than before. Lime doesn’t have the energy or care to mention it. 

Ghost imposters? Surely not. But maybe there are ghosts crewmates, too. Lime’s not sure he likes the idea of being watched by anyone at all. But if they could at least not sabotage the reactor or whatever while he’s sleeping, that would be nice. 

Even if they don't exist, though, they haunt his thoughts for a good while before releasing him back into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I had too much fun the first time, and ended up continuing this. I don't know how long this will last, how long it will be, if I'll finish it or what the finish looks like. I'm basically writing this as I go along. But I hope you enjoyed it!


	3. A New Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lime and Yellow discuss the possibility of ghosts, and what to do about them; Green becomes more curious about humans and wants to learn more, even if only about small things. Lime and Yellow really wish he'd keep his learning contained to asking Black questions, really.

The first time he wakes up, he doesn't even open his eyes. He's too comfy, enveloped in warmth and feeling safe. He drifts easily back into sleep, lulled by a gentle tidal noise, a little like hearing the sea from afar... 

The second time, it's a more full awakening. Sleep is further off, and a glance at his bedside clock tells him he's been asleep for long enough. 

"Morning," a soft voice sounds from beside him. Close. Very close. Lime turns his head while his brain tries to catch up. It's Yellow. The events of last night flood back in; the decision to sleep next to each other, the reactor, the puzzling circumstance of an imposter sabotage with no available imposter. 

Yellow smiles at him, his bright blond hair clumping into tufts, like it had done last night. Cute, he'd thought then, and he thinks the same now. Lime kind of wants to ruffle it, but that would involve moving his hands, and he doesn't want to get them cold. If he stays still, he'll remain at the perfect temperature. At least for now. His task list isn't alarming yet, so there's nothing urgent. Lime nods back, and stares up at the ceiling, absently admiring the welding on the ceiling vent. 

He wonders what else he can use as an alarm system. Maybe one of the others left their tablet behind – yeah, he thinks he recalls them taking anything valuable and non-emotional off them before ejecting them into space. Where did they put them, though? Probably one of the storage rooms – that can be today's job, unless Yellow knows where they are. Still, it's not a question for right now. 

"How did you manage to get a window? No one else has one, I don't think..." Yellow asks. He doesn't move either, which Lime is pleased about; with his legs pressed against Lime's side, he forms an important part of Lime's current temperature equilibrium. 

Does he know how he got one, particularly? He didn't ask for one, expecting that no cabins would have something as fancy as a window. He'd envisioned it more like a large dorm room, with no privacy at all, and hadn't anticipated being in his room for anything other than sleep. If he'd had a room at all. As it is, this is much nicer than he was expecting – nothing fancy, and all functional, but not terrible. It's better than any of the rooms he rented back on Earth. It's good they don't have a big dorm, since that would make an imposter killing spree so much easier. 

Plus, a private space was a godsend, particularly to start with. Now it’s just like most of the rest of the ship: empty. 

“Luck?” Lime suggests, lost for a reason himself. It’s not like he was ever a leader or a captain or anything, so there’s no reason for him to have it. There may be nothing more to it than that, and he doesn’t doubt that luck is probably the only reason he’s still alive and breathing right now. 

Alive. Speaking of which, he’d been thinking about that, before sleep. The possibility of ghosts. Ghost imposter sabotage. Urgh. That’s a whole new mess. How do they even get into these circuits? He thought the doors were totally locked circuits, unable to be hacked – maybe nothing is unable to be hacked if someone is trying hard enough. 

It probably makes sense if he thinks about it from an imposter’s angle – the only thing they seem to try hard enough at is killing people, and anything that helps them kill people and get away with it. Probably. Either they have atypical imposters on this ship, or they’re just not quite as focused on killing people as they could be. 

Not that killing five out of eight crewmates isn’t a frighteningly good hit rate. Lime can’t even say that his survival has anything to do with him personally. He knows it’s got everything to do with firstly luck, and Green being pre-occupied with Black. He’s heard of keeping enemies close, but seducing human-killing imposters wouldn’t have been his first guess, nor his first tactic. To each their own, maybe. 

“I guess we can share it now, so that’s good.” Yellow murmurs, oblivious to the tracks of thought Lime’s brain wheels down. Right. The window. Somewhere out there… the body of White, now sabotaging the ship?! 

“Ghosts must exist…” Lime mutters, more to himself than anything. Yellow huffs.   
“This again? You sure it wasn’t a random fault?” Lime shakes his head. He was an engineer before all this, and that wasn’t an error log. That was a forced defect. Perhaps, maybe, if he delved into the code more, he might be able to decipher the signal that sent the message. If things like that can be transmitted from the other side. “I mean, if you think so, maybe? I really hope you’re wrong, though. Like, really hope. Ghosts freak me out.” 

Yellow is grimacing when Lime looks at him, and pulls his legs closer towards himself. It leaves a great temperature rift where they had been pressed up against Lime. They’ll probably leave for breakfast soon, which is one of the reasons Lime doesn’t try and remedy the sudden chill. 

“If they could kill us, they’d do it,” Lime states. If killing as a ghost was possible, it would be ridiculously easy to pick them all off. And they’re still here, to the best of his knowledge. He’d like to think if he was dead the threat of being killed again wouldn’t be so… ever-present. Yellow nods shakily. 

Maybe sabotage is the only way they can affect the ship anymore, once dead. If so, then they can probably deal with that. Although… that’s just the imposters they’re thinking about. What about crewmates? Are they there too, hovering around? He really hopes not. 

“How would you even appease an angry imposter ghost who can kill your reactor at a second’s notice?!” Yellow cries. Lime sits up. The cold patch isn’t going, and breakfast isn’t going to come to him – not that it ever has, not since he was young. 

How? How else? 

“Shrines,” Lime says, as he thinks it. Where, he doesn’t know. How, he’s not quite sure. But it’s probably worth a shot. 

Headquarters would probably be horrified if they saw his impromptu task list stating the normal things alongside ‘make shrines (6)’ and ‘wire an alarm out of the emergency button’. In all honesty, it would have horrified him two months ago, in training, but this is, apparently, the life he leads now.

* * *

Idly, Lime shuffles the cards, reaching into the depths of his memories for some form of solitaire game to the tune of faint sounds from Yellow’s headphones, and the rhythmic clunking of the washing machine. 

The shrines went as well as they can in space with minimal resources. They set aside a whole table in the cafeteria – after they had fully dismantled the emergency button, since it seemed somewhat sacrilegious to dismantle it in front of their dead crewmates, for whom it may have saved lives – and used their ID cards. It wasn’t much, really, but they don’t have much. Yellow helps him wire a few little lights and plug it in, acting as impromptu candles. They spare six sheets of scrap paper to fold into something resembling a flower, dredged from days spent on earth paper-folding, and place one in front of each ID card. Neither of them are particularly religious, but they offer up a few words for a potentially present deity (opening up a whole new line of thoughts for Lime in which he mentally debates whether deities are linked to the earth of the entirety of space itself) and it seems enough. 

The world – and the ship – continues regardless, and they find themselves washing clothes, having completed all the other tasks for the day, short of actually wiring the new alarm. That will be done after washing. Yellow asked it to happen that way, because then Lime can focus on it and keep an eye out while Yellow sorts their clothes, and move anything else in from his room. 

The notion of permanent bed sharing on the Skeld has apparently been passed by Yellow, based on a currently nightly average of zero deaths and a relatively good night’s sleep. Yellow seems to appreciate having someone there at all times, including in sleep. Lime is coming around to the idea. 

Freecell. That’s a game he can play alone. He’s shuffled the cards about ten times more than necessary, and if the rules aren’t quite right, well. It’s not like it matters much. As long as he doesn’t have to move much; Yellow’s spread across the bench, head resting on Lime’s thigh with his eyes closed. He can’t bounce his leg like he does sometimes, but that’s okay. 

So he deals the cards out, face up, eight piles. It looks vaguely right to him, and that’s all that matters. Three of the aces end up near the bottom of the piles, which isn’t great, but he makes a start. He might be breaking some of the rules, but he’s inching closer to a win, so he’s not complaining. 

“What are those?” 

Lime jolts at the unexpected extra voice. Zoned out – really not good. Didn’t even hear the footsteps. He looks up at Green, who is thankfully not holding a knife or obviously gearing to kill anyone. He looks more interested in staring at the cards on the table. Yellow must spot Green immediately, because he sits up swiftly, removing his headphones without pausing the music, still faintly audible. 

Lime forgets that a question had been asked for a moment, waiting for the roaring of fear in his ears to settle down first. Green shoots him a puzzled look. 

“Cards,” he says eventually. Green looks back at them, then back at him.   
“And what are ‘cards’. What’s their function.” 

“They don’t have a function, really,” Yellow blurts, his voice only somewhat shaky. “They’re just entertainment.” He’s probably trying to dissuade this line of enquiry to get Green away from them in what is, now Lime thinks about it, a dead end. They don’t even have an emergency button. However useful that would be. 

Green squints at them. “Why are there letters.” 

Thinking about it from an imposter’s perspective – something he really didn’t think he’d ever do – he can see how it looks confusing; no number one, and J, Q, K instead of eleven, twelve and thirteen. But how does he even explain that – _why_ does he need to explain that? 

“Just code,” Lime says, shrugging. He doesn’t really know the reason himself, it’s more just… something that exists. Something that’s always been a thing, wholly unquestioned. Why _is_ it like that, anyway? 

Green stares at them for a long, long time. Eventually Lime gets a little fed up of being on edge and begins shifting cards around again, slowly, in case this is something that displeases imposters. 

No single game of freecell has ever been watched so closely, Lime is certain. No game of freecell has had the same stakes pinned on it, moving so slowly so Green can see every movement. Green could very literally murder him right this second, and Yellow would just have to watch. Or vice versa. He gets so convinced that it’s going to happen that he tries to work out which would be less awful. He doesn’t make any decision on that, even when he puts the final King on the pile and glances up at Green, still intently watching. 

Seeming to realise the game is over, Green looks at him. “Could you teach me that?” 

Lime blinks, once, twice. 

An _imposter_ wants to _learn a card game_. 

Well, if it’s going to stop or delay them both being killed, Lime can’t see a problem. Too much of one. He doesn’t get it, but it’s not like it’s a huge amount of effort, so… 

“If you want…” he mumbles. Yellow, silent the entire time, groans loudly.   
“I thought you weren’t meant to play poker with the devil. Or teach it, whatever!” he grumbles. Green, again, squints between the two of them, puzzled. Lime thinks about it for a second.   
“’t’s not poker,” Lime mutters, only because it’s not. He doubts lives, or souls, have been won or lost over freecell. He very much hopes this isn’t the first game of solitaire that got someone killed, either. He sets to shuffling the cards instead. Green watched with thinly veiled fascination. He’s still hovering over the table, a posture that would hurt anyone’s back. Would it hurt an imposter, if they’re only pretending to function as human? Do they know well enough what a human body can withstand? Lime nods at a small stool on the other side of the small room. “Sit down.” 

Green, to his surprise, obeys, fetching the seat and crunching his large frame up to sit on it. It’d be funny if his mere presence wasn’t so nerve-wracking. 

“Jack. Queen. King,” Lime states, laying out the cards in turn as he finds them. Green nods. “Eleven, twelve, and thirteen,” he says, whilst he points at the corresponding card as he states the number.   
“Why isn’t it just the numbers?” Green asks. He’s laid his hands on the table in front of him. Lime isn’t quite sure whether it’s meant to be reassuring – that he doesn’t hold a knife – or a threat. Red sure looked like someone had rended her asunder with sharp claws, and judging on the rumours of shape-shifting imposters, it’s entirely possible that she was. Lime tries to ignore it when he shrugs. 

“Ace is one, in this game.” He holds one up, a spade, when he comes across it in the middle of shuffling.   
“Different in other games?” Green questions, frowning slightly.   
“There’s thousands of games you can play with cards. Some of them the ace goes higher than the King, some it’s one, some it’s both,” Yellow pitches in, thankfully. He’s shifted so close to Lime that he’s almost pressed into his side.   
“Huh,” Green utters. “Like poker?”   
“We’re not teaching you poker!” Yellow snaps, then pulls back when Green gives him a look. “I mean, not now. It’s more complicated than freecell.” Lime briefly presses his knee against Yellow’s, as a silent comfort. It’s like stepping on ice, and not knowing if it’s two feet thick, or two centimetres. 

“In this, you set it out into eight…” Lime gives it one final shuffle, and begins setting them out face-up again. Black must have nerves of steel, or just be kind of stupid, because being the subject of an imposter’s intense gaze is not something Lime would ever volunteer for. “And put it into suits, ace to King. Move one card or set at a time. Four free spaces here, one card each. On these, red on black, black on red,” Lime says, putting a red nine on the ten of spades to demonstrate. Green frowns at the cards. “I’ll play, ask questions if you want.” 

“That’s the most I’ve ever heard you speak in one go,” Green remarks instead. Lime blinks, then shrugs. He’s not one for speaking too much, really. Yellow laughs faintly by his side.   
“Me too…” Yellow adds, sounding miffed. Whatever about, he’s not really sure. Green looks surprised.   
“Aren’t you together all the time?” he asks. 

Only since a week ago. Only since the last other crewmate got killed that wasn’t aligned to an imposter. Only since it was Green and Black left, the couple, the unknowns, and being together was the only way to assure any kind of safety, even if only pretend.   
“Only recently,” Lime says slowly, a warning. He has to respect Green and give him a wide berth and cater to any whims he has, but he’s not bowing down to him willingly. This is what survival looks like in this new game. Survival means being glued to Yellow, and even if Lime doesn’t mind that, he does mind being forced to do that because of the uncertainty of looming death. 

Green eyes him for a few moments, and Lime holds his gaze. It might be stupid, but if Green realises the effect of his presence and thus moderates himself, it might be for the best. Lime isn’t Black. Lime isn’t looking to be friends with imposters, however polite they seem. He’s going to keep far away if possible, and survive. 

Once Green nods, almost imperceptively, Lime returns to his game, slowly sorting the cards out, swapping them into and out of the free spaces. Green questions when he moves a train of cards, and Lime explains that that’s allowed. Slowly, slowly, he gets there, building up the suits once more, until they each sit in their own pile. 

Then he shuffles them again.   
“So the aim is to sort them,” Green starts, watching Lime’s hand shuffling the deck. “But then you immediately _unsort_ them.”   
“That’s the game,” Lime remarks, going through various shuffles until they look to be in a random distribution. Of course, he thinks to himself, there is a point where with enough shuffles, a deck may find itself back in order, as one of the millions of combinations of card orders. Chance is an odd thing. Neatening the pile up, he sets it on the table, and slides it across to Green. “Try a game if you want.” 

After a moment’s hesitation, Green picks the pack up, and begins to set it out exactly as Lime had done. Considering Lime’s pared down instructions, his observational memory must be decent. 

“So, in the cafeteria,” Green says. Yellow flinches. “Why have you two set up the ID cards like that? Seems a bit… fancy?” 

“They’re shrines. To commemorate the dead,” Yellow adds at the puzzled look he receives. “In case any ghosts are lingering and causing trouble for us. It might help them pass on, or at least, hopefully, persuade them to be peaceful.” 

Green scowls at the cards, and they both stiffen as he mutters something under his breath, something that sounds like ‘White you total brat’, before his face returns to a neutral expression again.   
“So why is White among those there? Surely you wouldn’t wish an imposter good fortune in… whatever is after death.”   
“Assuming it really wasn’t you causing the reactor meltdown last night…” Green’s face, interestingly, gains a vivid pinkish tinge, but he shakes his head. “The only other person who could mess with it like that when he was alive was White. If he’s around as a ghost, we thought maybe…” 

It doesn’t sound quite as sensible as it did this morning, Lime thinks as Yellow explains. But then it’s hard explaining some apparently very human ideas about the afterlife to someone who has precious little contact with human society outside of murdering them and blending in well enough not to get caught. 

Green sighs heavily, and drops his head for a moment. “I can assure you that White is around on this ship as a ghost. The others might be too, I wouldn’t know.” 

Lime and Yellow both just blink at him. Their theory is true… apparently. But how would Green even-   
“He’s upset with me for some reason, so he’s left… messages,” Green explains darkly. 

“I… see.” That’s… not something Lime wanted confirming, really. Yellow leans forwards.   
“How do you know it was him? Couldn’t it have been Black?”   
“It was White’s handwriting. Black’s would hardly be legible,” he remarks dryly, “And he would say it to my face rather than leave a message.” 

The two of them pause for a second, but he’s right. Black has no filter, and isn’t one to go sneaking around. 

“How do we persuade him not to sabotage us then?” Yellow asks, glancing back at Lime. If White’s ghost is upset with Green, and sabotaging is part of that plan, then they’re just collateral damage? That seems even worse than being personally targeted – they’ve been completely forgotten about. 

“I think he’ll like the shrine. Mostly that you’ve put him next to Pink,” Green tells them. It was Yellow’s idea. Seeing as White had seemed very attached to Pink, Yellow had thought maybe that would help.   
“I hope he does…” Yellow mumbles. A second later, the sound of footsteps approaching makes all three of them look up; Black appears by the door, brightening upon spotting Green. 

“Oh, you’re in here.” He spots the cards spread out in front of Green, and grins. “Cards, neat! We could play poker!” 

Lime senses that Yellow very narrowly prevents himself from burying his head in his hands.   
“It’s not poker. Apparently that shouldn’t be taught to the devil. Whatever that is.” Green states wryly, and Black pauses for a second, before bursting out laughing. Yellow squirms beside Lime. 

“Ah, I see. Well, I’m sure we can make an exception for you,” Black chirps merrily, while Green merely looks puzzled. “We could have a card session, teach you some more games than… this one.” Black clearly doesn’t quite recognise the set-up of the cards. “We’re all free now, right?” 

As if on cue, the washing machine comes to their rescue and clicks onto finished, bleeping mournfully to the room at large. Black twists to glance at it. “Oh, so that’s what this room is for.”   
“You haven’t done any washing?!” Yellow screeches, disbelieving. Black flaps his hand, chuckling.   
“No, I have. Red was doing it for me in exchange for her science tasks.”   
“And now?” Yellow questions. Green also seems interested in the answer. Black shrugs.   
“Haven’t needed to, yet! I’m fighting the machines later. Hopefully it’s not too difficult.” 

Oh, god. The last thing they need is a mess with a washing machine on board. Lime can imagine it now. It was bad enough in a house, the bubbles… everywhere… not to mention all the equipment here. If Black falls asleep and doesn’t even notice… 

“We’ll teach you, get your stuff.” Yellow clearly has the same thoughts as Lime. He makes his way over to the bleeping machine and quiets it. “I won’t do it for you but I can teach you to at least use the machine.” These machines are higher tech than any he’s seen on Earth, too, doing both washing and drying. Therefore, there’s the double whammy of flooding and fire. Best that they supervise this, for now. 

“Thanks!” Black dashes out again, and Yellow leans his head against the machine for a moment. Lime wants to pat his back, but he’s too far away. Green is smiling faintly.   
“You best learn too,” Lime says, which wipes that look away. “Finish this first.” 

Green does, dutifully and relatively swiftly, finish his game. As a ‘reward’ for teaching them to use the machines, Black cajoles them into agreeing to a poker night, before Lime and Yellow make their excuses to leave, grabbing their clothes. 

What, exactly, have they gotten themselves into now? Lime can’t help but wonder as he wires the makeshift alarm, whilst Yellow folds clothes and puts them away, muttering quietly to himself. It remains to be seen, and he can’t say he’s too eager about it. 

At least there is no alcohol aboard. It may be their one saving grace, this time.


	4. Fold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Downloads, a fall, and a night spent in Med Bay.

They survive poker night, somehow. Yellow muddled through, Black is too obvious. Green is decent – when he manages to get the hang of it. Lime gets the distinct feeling he's as interested in human society and emotions as Black seems to be about imposters. 

Lime, without really trying, wins quite a bit. Maybe because he really doesn't care what cards he gets, and whether he wins, it seems that his face remains the same. If anything does change, Yellow seems to be the only one who picks up on it, and that's only sometimes. Black keeps saying he's got a fantastic poker face and how he'd probably get away with being an imposter. 

He'd rather not think about that. Just as well that both he and Yellow have to submit medical scans the next day, so Yellow can prove to himself that Lime truly isn't an imposter. Even if he was, killing anything just seems like far too much work. The stress of not knowing about their own safety is bad enough while knowing he's innocent; if he'd committed a crime, and a murder at that, he'd hope it would erode on his psyche enough that he _couldn't_ hide it. 

Bumbling along for a few days spent avoiding Black and Green where they can, things go fairly smoothly for a while, if somewhat tense. Lime thinks that had Green wanted to kill them, he would have done. This presents a conundrum: does he not want to kill them, as he seems to not want to kill Black, or do they form some use to him? If so, what is the reason for keeping them alive? Perhaps to keep the ship running, but many of these tasks could be ignored, and Black wouldn’t have to do them. Why are they being kept alive? 

He voices none of this to Yellow. Likely Yellow has thought about it, but unless he brings it up, Lime isn’t about to mention it. Yellow’s still getting over the revelation about ghosts, and apparently saw some wires floating around in mid-air as they walked past a panel Lime was sure he’d seen Yellow replace. Lime’s fairly certain that in the corner of his eye whilst falling asleep, he’d seen a wisp of Red. 

He hopes not. 

Then, probably about a week after the first time they play poker, all the downloads appear on his task list at once. He’s not sure why it’s not just one, but all of them, but he has a sneaking suspicion he knows. The rest of the day seems to be spent downloading data from the various locations and uploading it again. It's tedious, long, and extremely boring. Either the amount of data is astronomical or the speed is just early internet, but each download takes a hideous amount of time. It's so boring he suggests cleaning each area while they wait. 

By the time they're done, most of the ship is spotless. And some of the downloads still aren't done. When they've really run out of things to do, including refilling all the various little things that need oil, watering the trees, cleaning the filter again because of the errant leaves again, they settle in the cafeteria with cards, again. There doesn't seem much else to do, really. It's not like they can really access the Internet out here, and he really doesn't fancy doing an exercise session right now after all their cleaning. They half-heartedly eat their rations and Yellow suggests slam, because poker doesn't even work with two people anyway, and if they start playing that, Green and Black might join and that's just difficult. 

Lime is a bit too sluggish to really excel at Slam, so Yellow gets a good head-start, and has a thin pile by the time Lime wakes up enough. It’s too much ground to make up though, and he ends up losing. Yellow grins victoriously, so he’s not very upset at all. 

“Your reactions aren’t fast enough,” Yellow announces smugly. Lime feels his lips twitch up into a brief half smile, and he snorts quietly.  
“Maybe I let you win,” he lies, and holds his hand out for the cards Yellow has collected, spread across the table as collateral from Yellow’s frantic final slam. He places the cards into Lime’s hand, slow to pull his hand back. He wears a smile Lime would almost call fond, although it soon melts into a yawn. More likely tired than anything else, Lime thinks to himself.  
“Sure, sure. Another round?” Lime suppresses a yawn himself and nods. A glance at his task list indicates that neither of the remaining tasks are finished. He won’t know how far they are off finishing until he physically checks them, though. Downloading data is his least favourite thing to do at the moment. But equally, if Black hadn’t put it off and it had appeared on their task list earlier, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so damn long. 

Then they both yawn while Lime shuffles and reshuffles. Yellow laughs slightly.  
“Maybe we should check on the downloads and leave them overnight, if they’re not done yet? I don’t really think Black would mess with them…” Yellow states sleepily. Lime nods; it’s been a long day, after all. Or just… a long time since he awoke. In the unnatural illumination of the spaceship, days go on as long as they need to. 

He puts the cards back into their box, a few a little worse for wear from some minorly over-enthusiastic slamming, and tucks it into his pocket. The first location is Navigation, which is… so, so far from being done. It was the last they started, so it makes sense, but even still, it annoys him. How can it take so many hours to download? The one at Electrical is moderately close to finishing, but sometimes the last 5% can take as long as the other 95%, and Yellow agrees, so they head back to the room. 

He can barely stop himself yawning as they brush their teeth together, and at least twice Yellow elbows him to stop him just falling asleep on the spot. It is around half two in the morning, but that hardly means anything. It’s the cleaning, probably. It’s quietly an endurance sport, and it always wore him out back on Earth too. Still, eventually they finish up and head back to get changed. 

In retrospect, he's still not quite sure what happened. He thinks his foot got caught in his suit, or it cramped up. In short, his foot didn't release itself as he expected it would, and he overbalanced because of it. With his hands full of suit and his head full of sleep, the ability to catch himself was delayed. 

In the moment, it's more like the sensation of a jolt and himself falling over, sluggishly putting his hands out, feeling something sharp on his left arm and his head meeting the wall heavily. He wonders if he lost consciousness briefly; it feels like he comes to, with Yellow frantically shouting his name, changing clearly abandoned midway through, as he's still topless, his under suit around his waist. 

"Urgh..." He groans, lifting one hand to his head. He didn't half smack it hard, and he half expects blood to be visible on his hand when he pulls it away from his head, but it's clear. It just hurts a heck of a lot. 

"Lime! Lime, are you okay?!" Yellow nigh on screeches. Lime nods, which makes the world waver unnervingly. 

"I'll be okay," he mutters, closing his eyes to try and stop the sensation of the world moving. Been a while since he fell over. 

"No, we're going to get you scanned in Med Bay, and I'll need to fix that arm. Best to check, with head injuries." The tone implies that no arguments will be taken into account. Lime opens his eyes again, and sure enough, Yellow looks determined. Alone, he'd probably have just tried to sleep it off, but he's not going to argue right now. 

As Yellow stands, Lime notices scars underneath his pectoral muscles; two, faintly curved. Part of him thinks he knows what that means, but most of his head is throbbing too hard to follow any thought train very far. He squashes his eyes shut to try and stem the headache that's growing. 

When he feels a hand curl around his, he opens one eye reluctantly. Yellow peers back, concerned.  
"Can you stand?" He asks. It's something Lime will have to try to know if he can or not. He puts his other hand on the floor to try and push himself up. 

"Ow." His left arm hurts. Turning it over to look at it, there's a sizeable gash down the outside. It's still dripping blood. 

Yellow goes around to his right side and hooks an arm around his back, lifting Lime's right arm so it's over his shoulders.  
“On three,” he says, and waits until Lime hums. His knees hurt too. But if he smacked them, maybe that took some force off his head. He hopes. Is Med Bay even equipped to deal with a haemorrhage in the skull? 

Yellow counts down and he manages to stand, if shakily. Thankfully Yellow keeps him supported as they shuffle around the bed and down the corridor to Med Bay, only two doors down. 

What if it _is_ a haemorrhage? What a way to go. Survived two imposters only to go down because of a fall. That would really be pathetic. And what would Yellow do? After this long, they need to be there for each other. He really doesn’t like the idea of leaving Yellow alone on the ship with Green and Black. He doesn’t like the idea of dying either. But his head hurts like a sledgehammer’s hit it, and his arm aches too. He really hopes imposters don’t smell blood. Would that make them sharks? Green’s got the teeth and the menacing aura. Lime starts to imagine him as a shark. A green shark… that’s kinda funny. Would Black be one of those sucker fish that stick with them? 

“Lime?”  
He’s zoned out. They’re in Med Bay, facing the scanner. Yellow peers at him, looking incredibly concerned.  
“Scanner…” Lime murmurs. Maybe it’s bored of him. They only scanned themselves earlier, after all. What if the scanner kicks him out and refuses to see him? That would be- Yellow helps him onto the scanner. Gosh he’s tired.  
“Can you stand on your own?” Yellow asks him. He’s not entirely sure, but he nods. The arms holding him up reluctantly release him, and Yellow punches his code into the scanner, and watches as the lights filter up and down Lime’s body. 

He just needs to lie down and sleep. There’s beds here. Maybe he’ll just lie down…  
“Lime, stay there!” Yellow snaps when he shifts though. The scanner also bleeps grumpily, so he stops in place once more. 

It feels like ages, but eventually the scanner finishes, and delivers its verdict as Yellow helps to support him again. 

“Findings: One contusion to the upper right frontal area of the skull. No intracranial haemorrhaging detected. One laceration to the left distal forearm. Minor contusions to both knees above patellae. Advice: clean wound on arm. Apply cooling to head. Administer recommended dose of analgesia. Monitor for neurological symptoms of concussion. Rescan at 2:00 hours and 6:00 hours from event. Submit first rescan at 04:49. Further information found on screen. Scan submitted to medical records.” The machine bleeps, and prints a lengthy report. 

“No bleeding, that’s good! Come on, lie down, I’ll clean that up for you,” Yellow says, sounding a little more relaxed. He guides Lime to the nearest bed and sits him down, making sure to gently swing his legs onto the bed and add another pillow from the next bed before he bustles off to get the appropriate supplies and collect the printed report. 

Lime squashes his eyes shut against the glaring lights. They tried saving Purple in here, what, three weeks ago? Four? It feels like an eternity ago. Lime never really got on with Purple, too presumptuous, but seeing him just go on the bed, the knife directly into his heart and no way to stop the bleeding… He won’t be the same. That won’t happen to him. It can’t. He has to stay, for Yellow. 

Yellow, who he senses has returned by the dip on one side of the bed. His left side. He smiles reassuringly at Lime, who merely squints back, the lights too bright and his head hurting too much to do anything more.  
“Here,” he says, holding out a drink and a small pot. Lime takes both, vaguely recognising the tablets as painkillers, and takes them without hesitation. Yellow takes them back and sets the empty pot on the table next to the cup of blissfully cold water, before giving him a cooling pack to put on his head. “This will probably hurt, but I need to clean your arm, okay?” Lime hums, rather than nod, and leans back gingerly, taking a second to arrange the cooling pack before he relinquishes his left arm for Yellow. 

Yellow works efficiently, his gloved hands working swiftly and gently whilst he murmurs reassurances. The painkillers are good, although there is still the odd stinging sensation; he tries not to move though. It’s almost… nice, being looked after, even though he’d still rather not have head-butted the wall. It’s a foreign sensation, this care. Lime’s always been pretty independent, both by choice and necessity, but there’s something about this, giving himself leeway to be cared for, cared _about_ , that’s kind of nice. New, but nice; Yellow’s hand curled under his hand as he methodically cleans and then firmly bandages it. 

“All done,” Yellow murmurs softly. “Have some rest, I’ll keep watch.” 

Lime hums once more, eyes already shut. Somehow, a small part of his brain thinks that Yellow might be wearing that tired smile again. He’s almost tempted to check before he falls asleep, and forgets all about it.

* * *

“- Green crewmate, submit scan in Med Bay in one minute. Lime Green crewmate, submit scan in Med Bay in one minute.” 

Rolling over, he groans, something peeling off his forehead. His head is throbbing, and he’s not had nearly enough sleep. More hours, just leave him be for a few more hours… 

“Lime Green crewmate, submit scan in Med Bay immediately.”  
The mechanical voice however, shows him no mercy. Slowly he blinks his eyes open, and notes that the lights have been dimmed somewhat. The door to Med Bay is closed, the panel flashing a faint red, and he stares at it for a second. 

“Lime Green crewm-”  
“Yup,” he says, although that doesn’t shut the voice up. Finding his task list, he acknowledges the task and yawns widely, reluctantly sitting up. In doing so, he finds Yellow, sat leant against the crash drawers, shifted over the vent in the room, and half nodding off, staring absently at the floor. Can’t be comfortable – not that the Med Bay beds are as comfortable as his normal bed either. Yellow must catch the motion of him swinging his legs over the side of the bed and shuffling himself off the bed. His head pulses for his efforts, and he squints his eyes shut, holding still until it retreats. 

“Lime! Are you feeling any better?” Yellow asks, making to stand up – then pausing. He was sat cross-legged, after all, so Lime can imagine the pins and needles. 

“Just submitting a scan. Take a bed, Yellow,” he whispers, spotting the water still on his bedside and taking a grateful sip. He feels a little more human after that, at least. 

“No, I’ll get a new cooling pad. Any more painkillers?” Lime pauses to think about it, then nods. Gingerly he stands up, shuffling over to the scanner and putting his code in. Yawning, he waited for it to make its assessments, listening as Yellow collects things behind him. 

"Updated findings: no intracranial haemorrhaging at this point. Some minor brain swelling. Concussion possible. Infection markers not raised. Action: monitor for neurological symptoms indicating concussion. Submit repeat scan in 04:00 hours, at 08:50. Administer anti-inflammatory analgesia. Rest, avoid strenuous activity and stressful situations. Printing report. Scan submitted to medical records."

"Avoid stressful situations…" Lime mutters, disbelieving. Yup, Green will just stop being threatening if the Med Bay scanner says so. That alleviates _all_ his problems. Yellow snorts. 

"Someone tell Green he needs to stop being an imposter," Yellow jokes, rolling his eyes before his expression turns to soft concern. "How are you feeling now?" 

Lime takes a mental overview of his state and pain levels. His head is throbbing, something he's not sure the painkillers will fix entirely. He's tired as heck. His arm just seems a bit numb, but he thinks Yellow might have used some of the anaesthetic on it. Essentially he just feels tired and achey.  
"Tired," he utters in response. Yellow smiles sympathetically.  
"I'll bet. Let's get you back to bed, see how much sleep you can get before the next scan." With a hand on Lime's back, he guides Lime back to the bed and generally fusses until he's tucked in, having had his anti-inflammatories and the new cooling patch has been applied. Yellow softly brushes his hair off his forehead, which seems to take longer than Lime thinks it should. Equally, he's never done that to anyone, so he wouldn't know. Maybe his hair is just unruly. 

"You should sleep too," he says when Yellow yawns. Again, that sleepy smile.  
"I need to keep watch." 

Lime thinks of the emergency medical equipment drawers over the vent, and flashing panel on the doors. 

"Four hours. Neither of them are ever up at this time." Yellow looks conflicted, so Lime pats the covers. "At least lie down." 

"Okay, okay, if you insist," he says, not looking very unhappy about it. "On the other side though, so I don't interfere with your arm. Let me know if you're uncomfortable and I'll move, alright?" Lime obediently shuffles over, Yellow slipping gingerly in beside him, as though he might break. In truth, Med Bay isn't that warm and the blankets aren't that thick. Having Yellow there will help, and judging from the bags under his eyes, he's also extremely tired. 

The Med Bay beds are somewhat narrower than his normal bed, in which they barely fit anyway. Initially, Yellow lies on his side, his legs less curled up than usual. The way he twitches makes Lime think that he’s right on the side of the bed, and he shuffles over a little more. There’s not much space to shift into, though, and Lime is not that warm. Such a big space is harder to heat than his much smaller room, and the covers on his bed are thicker. A few weeks spent sharing a bed with Yellow, and he’s used to being warmer when he’s asleep. 

“You can be closer,” Lime says, and Yellow shuffles a little bit, making very little difference. “I won’t break, and I don’t mind,” he affirms, tilting his head a little to glance at Yellow, as much as he can without the cooling pad shifting. 

“Are you sure?” Yellow asks, sounding uncertain. “If you get too hot, that might aggravate your headache, though…” 

Lime snorts. “I’m sure.” It seems a little unlike Yellow to be shy about these things, but at Lime’s insistence, he does shuffle closer, gingerly sliding one leg over Lime’s, his entire side pressed up against Lime and their legs tangled together. It’s surprisingly comfortable. 

“This… is okay?” Yellow inquires once more. Lime nods slightly.  
“We’d be cold else,” he murmurs. Yellow sighs, seeming to deflate a bit. Lime finds his arm under the covers with his right hand and tugs it across his chest, remaining a loose hold on it once in a comfortable position. “Thank you, Yellow.” 

Yellow hums, tone undecipherable. He does press his nose lightly into Lime’s shoulder though and relaxes some.  
“What if it hadn’t been me?” Yellow starts. Lime hums in question, and Yellow obligingly explains, though hesitantly. “If… If I’d been targeted instead of Red. If it’d been me in front of the ejector door instead of Purple. If White had got me. If it hadn’t been me and you left here, would that… change anything?” 

Lime thinks he understands the true question here, but he answers the one presented to him.  
“Of course,” he states simply. Had it been Red, she might not have found Black. She might have reacted worse to Green trying to save Black. She might have tried to help more. She might have tried to kick Green out regardless. Had it been Purple, he might have been killed by Green instead. It might have been Purple and Red here, against Green and Black. Maybe they’d take more combative action. Maybe they would have screeched on every wavelength to get more help, even knowing the chance of success was minimal. 

Can he imagine being close to any of the other crewmates in the same way as he currently is with Yellow? No. But then he never imagined being this close to anyone, not before this journey, and not after it. The whole thing is new to him, in so many ways. He never imagined sharing a bed with anyone, being stuck together for weeks on end, being in a constant state of alert in case of a murderer. 

He wouldn’t have chosen any of this – definitely not the murderer part, anyway – but it’s presented itself to him, and he deals with things as they arise. Like sharing a bed. Like finding corpses. Like getting concussion. He’s not thinking of futures in so much as he just hopes to leave the ship alive, and he hopes with Yellow also alive. Beyond that though, he hopes that maybe they’ll stick together once they’ve landed. If not, well, he’d adjust to it the way he adjusts to everything else, but right now, the thought of living somewhere without Yellow seems odd. He’s gotten used to that constant presence, calmed down from the first few days of it, now that they’ve both settled into each other. 

It’s not a situation he would ever have volunteered himself for, but he’s here, and he’s glad Yellow is. There were several crewmates he would have liked a lot less to be stuck in this situation with. 

“Of course? What’s that meant to mean?” Yellow asks, sounding somewhat hurt.  
“If it was someone else, it would change,” Lime replies. “This is fine, though.”  
“But-” Yellow starts.  
“Yellow.” Lime squeezes his arm. “I’m happy. As much as is possible, like this.” 

Yellow seems to stop and consider this for a long moment. Lime closes his eyes from the dimmed lights of the Med Bay, feeling himself start to become sleepy once more. His head is still throbbing, albeit less than before, but his arm is fine when he doesn’t move it much. 

“Oh,” Yellow murmurs. “Well, I’m glad.” 

But he relaxes completely, and Lime feels like he can sense Yellow’s smile without looking. Yellow, it seems, is also about as happy as can be achieved under the current circumstances. 

Which isn’t ‘happy’, per say, but more relaxed and not currently reminded of imminent death. They’ll take it, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Still working on the next chapter and I have things I need to write for zines, but hopefully I can continue! 
> 
> Also, Crimson Chains added a cute new little comic to Love Among Us, so check that out on tumblr or Webtoons!

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! Again, please check out the original comic, you won't regret it!


End file.
